The Life of the faithful Christian is a continuous Feast

7 Ιανουαρίου 2010

A Homily of the Late Archbishop Christodoulos of Athens

Translated and edited by Protopresbyter George Dion. Dragas, PhD, DD, DTh

Note: This year’s Celebration of the Feast of Christmas and the Feasts of the Twelve Days of Christmas, invite us to reflect on the important meaning of the Feasts which the Church has instituted for our life. All the church Feasts are connected with the Divine Economy, i.e. with the becoming man of the Son and Word of God, the Mystery of our Lord Jesus Christ, which constitutes the basis and the perspective of our salvation and the salvation of the world. This great and vital matter is the subject of the present Homily of Archbishop Christodoulos of blessed memory who fell asleep in the Lord on 28 January 2008.

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I believe that this Homily is seasonable and timely today as it was when it was first delivered, and this is why we have included it in our periodical for the edification of the faithful Christians. I would also point out that this Homily was originally delivered at the Conference Center of the Metropolis of Demetrias (in Volos) which was established by the blessed Archbishop and continues to operate under the leadership of the present Metropolitan Ignatios. The Metropolis of Demetrias has historic ties with the Metropolis of Boston inasmuch is the fist Bishop of Boston (1923-1930), Joachim Alexopoulos, who was a pioneer Orthodox clergyman in America (he came to Washington in 1905) was transferred to the Metropolis of Demetrias where he continued his brilliant ministry.

Protopresbyter George Dion. Dragas, DD.

Preamble: Today the grace of the Holy Spirit has gathered us together that we may consider with great reverence the general theme of the “Christian Feasts” and examine what is involved in the celebration of a “Church Feast,” which is most important for our life.

The necessity of Feasts for human life: “A life without feasts is like a long road without an inn,” according to Democritos(1). Generally speaking a feast is a deep psychological need of human beings. As it is rightly argued, “all psychological healthy human beings feel the need and want to celebrate, to find a way to express what they believe and what is alive inside them.”(2). Thus, a feast constitutes an indispensable element of all civilizations, all peoples, all religions and all epochs. In the case of the Christian Feasts, however, or, more correctly, of Church Feasts, things are much more complex and have a depth which is much greater than the simple psychological need of human beings for celebration, entertainment and expression of beliefs and experiences.

The Jewish, the Greek and the Christian Celebrations of Feasts: “The Jew celebrates Feasts, but according to the letter” and so, by “seeking to fulfill the somatic law, he has not reached the spiritual law,” as St. Gregory the Theologian observes. “The Greek also celebrates, but according to the body and keeping in mind his own gods and demons, some of whom are the creators of the passions as they themselves acknowledge, while others are honored because of their passions. Hence his celebration is wicked.” “We (Christians) also celebrate, but as it seems right to the Spirit.”(3) This is the determinant characteristic of the church Feast as compared to any other human Feast. The true church Feast is far removed from any element that is secular, wicked, impure or fleshly. And there is much more. It exceeds by far even human entertainment which is not necessarily sinful but takes place mostly because of an innocent heart. It has a Spiritual character with capital S –meaning something that is driven by the Holy Spirit.

The Feasts of the old Israel had deteriorated into a dry form and letter of the Law, without the spiritual depth which they presupposed. There was a distance, often a great chasm, between those who celebrated and the object of celebration, or rather the Subject of the Feast. This is why Yahweh stated through the mouth of the Prophet Isaiah: “I do not tolerate your Moon celebrations and Sabbaths; my soul hates days of fasting and abstention from work, as well as your moon day observations and your feasts; You have exceeded all limits for me, and I will not forgive your sins.”(4)

The Feasts of Paganism are worse still, because they were (and still are!) occasions of unbridled frenzy of various passions, or at least of secular display, of debased joy, of temporary rejoicing or entertainment, in the negative sense of the word, or of pulling apart and breaking up the inner human being. On some occasions they were even opportunities for flagrant crimes, as for example of human sacrifices.

The Secular Feasts, on the other hand, which are multiplied day by day throughout the world, at best offer entertainment only on the horizontal dimension and the least, or none, soul mentoring and uplifting. Their constitutive parts are centrifugal (deviating) and not centripetal (aligned). They are earth-driven, nature-driven and almost never driven towards God or the God-man.

Church Feasts differ from all other human feasts: There is, then, an ontological (existential) difference between the church feasts and all the other human feasts. The former are feasts which are celebrated “in spirit and in truth.”(5) The latter, however gallant, panegyric, ritually indefectible, spectacular and impressive they might be, they lack of both. Thus, the divine Chrysostom will note, that “This is a true feast, where there is salvation of souls.”(6) St. Gregory the Theologian will stress epigrammatically, that “The Pinnacle of a feast is the memory of God.”(7). This is what the Spirit wants: that the pivot and center of our feast and its recapitulation should be the memory of God, and that its end, i.e. its aim and scope should be the salvation of the soul. When, of course, we say memory of God we do not mean a simple reminder of God, or a simple remembering of the work of His saving economy for us, or of some specific life-saving divine-event, such as Christmas, Epiphany, Transfiguration, Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension, Pentecost, and so on. The memory of God is our communion with God by grace, in other words, to become worthy, as the Apostle says, “to partake of the divine nature.”(8) The memory of God is the ascetic and mystical Knowledge and partaking of God through God’s holy and uncreated energies, i.e. what the Fathers called “To suffer (experience) the divine things.”

The witness of St. Maximos the Confessor: St. Maximos in chapter 46 of the Seventh Century of Theological Chapters, says, that “God, who does not want the days to be honored by human beings, did order the Sabbath and the moon days and the feasts to be honored…but He also indicated that it should be He who is honored through these days symbolically. He, indeed, is the Sabbath, as the rest of the soul from the labors in the flesh and as the ceasing of the trials for righteousness sake. He is Pascha, as the liberator of those who had been kept captives through the bitter slavery of sin. He is Pentecost, as the first-fruits and final destiny of all beings; and He is the Word, in whom all things have been constituted in nature.”(9)

The reason and inner entelechy of the Feasts, then, according to the divinely-wise Maximos, is this very God himself. Whoever does not accept this basic truth is obviously deceived. If God Himself, however, who is in need of nothing, is the reason and entelechy (driving principle) of a feast, then every feast –on the human level– is something much more ritual and panegyric activity. It is the kairos, i.e. the ripe time or opportunity for the appropriation of the Mystery of salvation, of the impassible experience of suffering divine things by means of a coordinated spiritual battle and repentance, an opportunity for being in communion and participation with God, as we have already noted. If this applies to all the church Feasts, then, it does more so to the Feasts of the Lord, the Dominical Feasts, which, compared to the rest of them (i.e. those of the Theotokos, the Cross, the Saints, etc.), is what the sun is inn relation to the moon and the stars. It also applies equally for every celebration of the Divine Liturgy, which is the epitome (the summary) of all the Feasts together. Within these parameters, St. Gregory the Theologian admonishes us as follows: “So, then, let us not celebrate in a manner which is panegyric, but divine; not worldly but transcending the world; not seeking our own things, but those of the other, or rather, those of the Master; not those of sickness, but those of healing; not those of creation but those re-creation.”(10) A celebration that is divine and transcending the world presupposes, of course, sweating and ascetical laboring, tears being shed from the heart and inner purification. The same father will also add: “Purify for me, the, mind, the hearing and the thought, all those who wish to nurture your selves with such things (since the word we speak is about God and is divine), that you might take your leave having been fed with the things that are never emptied,”(11)

Purification of senses and the Vision of God: St. John the Damascene will suggest with his sweetest verse, “Let us purify our senses that we might see Christ sparkling with the unapproachable Light of the Resurrection,”(12) so that we might celebrate the Feast of Feasts and the Festival of Festivals, i.e. the Pascha. The spiritual battles and the purifying tears will prepare the ground for the arrival of the all-enabling and humanity-loving Divine Grace. It is the Grace which will provide the cure not simply of our wounds which were caused by the fiery arrows of the evil one and our healing from the ulcers and the disabilities which were caused by the blameworthy passions; but also, and what is indeed more important, our radical recreation in Christ and our growth in the Memory of God. This is why St. John Chrysostom will say, that “the greatest Feast is the (acquisition of) good conscience.”(13) St. Theodore of Edessa will underline, that we must celebrate “by renewing our mind and soul through purification.”(14) In this case the celebrating faithful “is exalted by the purification and is brightened up.”(15). He enters or rather mystically into the divine cloud of Grace by the Paraclete; He becomes obvious of time and space. He forgets all that is low and vain. He even forgets his own self, is illumined and gratified in all his existence, is elevated, and fulfilled entirely by the presence of the Lord. In sort, he experiences, relatively of course to the degree of his purification and his entire spiritual condition, the somber statement of the Apostle Paul: “It is no longer I, but Christ who lives in me.”(16) Thus, the Feast becomes a mystical foretaste of the Kingdom of God: “Taste and see that the Lord is good.”(17) It becomes a participation in the panegyric celebration and joy of the first-born in the Land of the Living, “where the pure tone of the celebrants and of those shouting ceaselessly, is the Lord, Glory to You.”(18) Put otherwise, it becomes a source of life and salvation.

The Church’s Festal Calendar: The constant succession of the Feasts within each yearly cycle transforms the secular calendar into a Festal calendar and “so, the entire life of the faithful Christian becomes a continuous celebration,” as quite rightly Professor Ioannis Phountoulis has pointed out: “The Christian believer lives on the earth, but his citizenship is in heaven. And this heavenly citizenship and endless celebration, where God …in the midst of gods,(19) and angels together with human beings celebrate is depicted and sensitized by the Feast Calendar of our Church.”(20) Our Church’s Festal calendar, then, is the sanctification of our time and its transfiguration into eternity. It is the Eastern Gate of the Civitas Dei. It is the Exodus from the Egypt of daily sorrow and misery into the breadth, the comfort and spaciousness of the spiritual Promised Land. It is the Ladder that leads to heaven and the road which is truly straight and leads to the Heavenly Jerusalem, which “has been prepared for us as a bride adorned for her husband.”(21) This is the deeper meaning of the Festal Calendar for our life. Nevertheless, you will allow me, in my status as of a responsible church pastor and hierarch, to note a few more practical things, as an expression of an intense and painful pastoral anguish.

Today’s Problem: On the difficult days of our time, my beloved, when the center of interest is no longer either the God-man, as it ought to have been, nor even the human being, as the God-less humanism would wish, but the beastly and soul-damaging passions, as it ought not to have been, among which those at the top are the beastly sensuality, the scum of avarice and the unbridled and demonic egoism, human beings feel, by natural necessity, not only an immeasurable loneliness and dullness, but also the absence of a true meaning of life and hope. These terrible life experiences are the jaws of death which crunch day after day their entire psychosomatic existence. They struggle, then, in a thousand ways to be delivered from this disaster. Is it, I wonder, casual, that human beings turn today in frenzy way to ceaseless sight-seeing even to the most remote and exotic, often, parts of the world, to continuous entertainments and various revelries without barriers? Is it casual that today human beings invent all the time new secular feastings and folkloric jubilations, athleticism, artistic (in and without quotations) culture (again in and without quotations), nature-worship, of political etc. content? One day a feast is raised for this or that agrarian product, and another day, for this or that fishing catch, and on the day after for flowers, and on the next one for the forest, and on the one after the next for the environment, or for the carnival, for those that are fallen in love, for the woman, the child, the mother, the father, the worker, the secretary, for peace, for this or that anniversary, and so on. All these cry and shout with a mighty voice that there is a major problem inside them. There is a spiritual drought, hunger and thirst of soul! There is an existential vacuum! And this hunger and thirst are sought to be satisfied with prodigal carobs and with drawing water from broken wells. This existential vacuum is sought to be covered with bubbles and the greater inner problem to be resolved with cataplasms, with old ladies’ refrains and with decorated phylacteries. One might say: This is how much people know and this much they do! Right!.. But it is exactly at this point that the Church’s responsibility comes to the fore, the accountability of the faithful, and the accountability of all of us!

The mission of the orthodox Christians, laity and clergy: Those who appropriate in their life the all-embracing mystery of the Church by participating in the Supper of the Kingdom, by tasting the Heavenly Bread, and by drinking from the Cup of Life and becoming partakers of the holiness of God,(22) i.e. those who know experientially the goodness of the Lord and can sing with all the Saints: “We have seen the divine Light, we have received the Heavenly Spirit, we have found the true Faith, as we worship the undivided Trinity.”(23), all those for whom “the entire duration of a feast is a time of opportunity (…) on account of the excess of the goods that are granted,”(24), are obliged to bring to light their sacred experience and to preach from the house tops.(25) They are obliged to help out of love, with a missionary zeal, I would say, as many as they can, so that they too can find the precious Pearl and their position among those invited to the Supper.(26) Especially those of the sacred catalogue (of the clergy) are first obliged to provide an example. Our entire priestly ministry ought to project the aroma of the Feast, which is primarily specified as: “a demonstration of good works and pity of soul, and integrity of action.”(27). We should be the first to appropriate in our life the Memory of God, as we described it earlier, so that we might be able to invite persuasively the others by saying that “come and see”(28) and the other, “If there is a grateful servant, let him enter rejoicing with the joy of His Lord…Let everyone come into the joy of our Lord…The rich and the poor should dance with each other…All should take from the banquet of the Faith. All should enjoy the richness of his goodness.”(29) It is a pity; it is our failure, that the faithful ignore the life-breathing grace of the Church Feasts, that the churches are not always super-filled right to the horns of the altar by the children of the Church who bear the name of Christ and, consequently, the people, being thirsty and hungry turn elsewhere, to empty holy tables and to waterless clouds of vain and soul-destroying jubilations and celebrations of this deceiving age.

It is time, that we show in words and deeds that the Eucharistic synaxis, our extempore and almost daily feast, is a joy and a blessing –not a religious duty. It is catching a breath of life, a refreshment and rest of soul, according to the word of the Lord: “come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,”(30) and not a preset service or conventional duty. It is a sober intoxication and a Davidic jubilation: “and I will play and dance before the Lord”(31) and not a miserable pietism of Melchol the daughter of Saul.(32) Our people should be taught to discern and to experience Christ not only as a Righteous Judge, as He is indeed, but also as the Joy of All, as indeed He is also. Behind the fire, the darkness, the cloud, the storm and the great cry(33) of Golgotha, they should see the rising light, the grace and the joy of the empty Tomb, the jubilation of the First day of the Sabbaths, the brilliance of the Eighth Day. After the “It is finished!”(34) of the Great Friday, they should lend a listening ear in order to hear the greeting “Rejoice!”(35) of the Paschal Sunday. Behind the labor of asceticism, the exhaustion of fasting, the rears of repentance, and the endurance of temptations and the sorrows of life, they should see the rest of the sons of the Kingdom and the enjoyment of the Supper of the Marriage of the Lamb,(36) as well as the sweetness of the Love which forgives and grants “the unfading crown of life!”(37)

Notes:

1. Cf. John Stobaeus, 154, 38.
2. Διονύσιος Ψαριανός, Μητροπολίτης Κοζάνης, ΕΞΑΠΛΑ, p. 89.
3. Λόγος ΜΑ΄ Εἰς τὴν Πεντηκοστήν. Ε.Π.Ε. 5, 114.
4. Isaiah α΄, 14-15.
5. John δ΄, 24.
6. On Genesis, Α΄, Ε.Π.Ε. 2, 12.
7. Λόγος ΛΘ΄ Εἰς τὰ Ἅγια Φῶτα, Ε.Π.Ε. 5, 90.
8. Β΄ Πέτρ., α΄, 4.
9. ΦΙΛΟΚΑΛΙΑ ΤΩΝ ΙΕΡΩΝ ΝΗΠΤΙΚΩΝ, Τόμ. Β΄, Ἀθ. 1958, σελ. 176.
10. Λόγος ΛΗ΄ , Εἰς τὰ Θεοφάνια, Ε.Π.Ε., 5, 40.
11. Ἔνθ’ ἀνωτ.
12. Α΄ ώδὴ τοῦ Κανόνος τῆς Ἀναστάσεως.
13. Περὶ Ἄννης, Ε΄, Ε.Π.Ε. 8Α, 115-116.
14. Κεφάλαια Πάνυ Ψυχωφελῆ Ρ΄, λγ΄, ἐν ΦΙΛΟΚΑΛΙΑ, Τόμ. Α΄, Ἀθ. 1957, σελ. 309.
15. Ἀναβαθμὸς δ΄ ἤχου.
16. Γαλ. β΄, 20.
17. Ψαλμ. 33, 9.
18. Β΄ ίδιόμελον τῶν Αἴνων τῆς Μεγ. Τρίτης.
19. Ἰωάν. Δαμασκηνοῦ, Κανὼν εἰς τὴν
Μεταμόρφωσιν, ὠδὴ η΄, τροπάριον α΄.
20. ΛΕΙΤΟΥΡΓΙΚΗ Α΄, Θεσσαλονίκη 1995. σελ. 113.
21. Ἁποκ. κα΄, 2.
22. Πρβλ. Ἑβρ. ιβ΄, 10.
23. Ὕμνος τῆς Πεντηκοστῆς, ἐπισφραγιστικὸς τῆς Θείας Λειτουργίας.
24. Ἰω. Χρυσόστομος: Εἰς τὴν Α΄ πρὸς Κορινθίους ΙΕ΄, Ε.Π.Ε. 18, σ. 418-420.
25. Πρβλ. Ματθ. ι΄, 27.
26. Πρβλ. Λουκ. ιε΄, 15-24.
27. Εἰς τὴν Α΄ πρὸς Κορινθίους, ΚΗ΄, Ε.Π.Ε. 18Α, σ. 214.
28. Ἰωάν. α΄, 46.
29. Πασχάλιος Κατηχητικὸς Λόγος τοῦ Ἁγ. Ἰωάν. Χρυσοστόμου.
30. Ματθ. ια΄, 28.
31. Β΄ Βασιλ. στ΄, 21.
32. Ἔνθ’ ἀνωτ. στ΄ 16 καὶ 22-23.
33. Πρβλ. Δευτερ. ε΄, 22.
34. Ἰωάν. ιθ΄, 30.
35. Ματθ. κη΄, 9.
36. Πρβλ. Ἀποκ. ιθ΄, 9.
37. Ἀποκ. β΄, 10.